First-party data has always been part of the holy grail for marketers. Now, with Google deprecating the third-party cookie in Chrome and with the expansion of regulatory policies aimed at protecting consumer privacy, first-party data has never been more critical as brands seek a future-proof data set to enable efficient targeting and measurement. One group of companies moving aggressively to meet this need is retailers.
The recent announcement by Walgreens Advertising Group (wag) regarding a self-serve programmatic solution is an important milestone in the continued evolution of retail data applications, and OpenX is pleased to be playing a central role in this initiative. When the program launches in Q2 of this year, DSPs, agencies and brands will be able to seamlessly activate campaigns across the open web via OpenX, targeting Walgreens’ proprietary audiences.
An integrated healthcare, pharmacy and retail leader serving local communities for more than 120 years, Walgreens counts more than 95 million myWalgreens members and roughly 1 billion daily touchpoints with consumers. The wag/OpenX collaboration will allow marketers to zero in on purchasers of more than 70 key product categories and other advanced customer targets.
The wag collaboration is enabled by OpenX’s development of OpenAudience, which enables retailers, consumer brands, first-party data owners, publishers and agencies to match their data directly with OpenX’s 200 million monthly users across 1,200 publishers. Marketers can then activate these audiences via a unique Deal ID in any of the 70+ DSP’s connected to the OpenX ecosystem.
To target wag audiences on OpenX inventory, all a marketer needs is to choose their audience and request a single Deal ID that can be executed through their DSP of choice. Deal IDs can be generated in minutes, and all campaigns are run without any disruption to the traditional programmatic workflow.
Through third-party partnerships and proprietary technology, OpenX is able to ensure a high quality marketplace. Deal IDs executed across our exchange run on inventory that is compliant with all applicable privacy and data protection regulations.
OpenAudience is built in partnership with industry leading identity solutions from LiveRamp, LiveIntent and Experian, and is already powering our partnerships with best-in-class solutions from Captify, Audigent, LoopMe and NYIAX. Our partners are increasingly recognizing the value that OpenAudience is bringing to the market, and we look forward to sharing more on this fast-growing part of our business in the near future.
If you’re a brand, agency, DSP, publisher or retailer, please reach out to learn more.